Katy Long tells stories about immigration and identity.
As a child Katy had two passports but no hometown. So perhaps it was inevitable that once she grew up, she started asking other immigrants questions about how to find your way home.
Born in the north of England, Katy grew up between Canada and the UK, emigrating (and returning) twice before she turned 12.
She started her inquiries into immigration as an academic researcher, and was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2009.
Katy then spent nearly a decade working a migration researcher at the University of Oxford, LSE and Edinburgh before moving to San Francisco in 2014, taking up a Visiting Fellowship at Stanford University. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, and holds an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.
Katy’s first book, The Point of No Return: Refugees, Rights and Repatriation was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press and Katy is also the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014). Katy is regularly interviewed by media outlets — including Time Magazine and CNN — about this research.
From 2015 to 2017, Katy was an advisor to Sir Peter Sutherland in his role as Special Representative on International Migration to the UN Secretary General. Katy has also worked with numerous other international organizations, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the World Bank, the UK Department of International Development, the Overseas Development Institute and the Migration Policy Institute.
Yet however valuable academic research and policy recommendations on immigration, Katy came to believe these tools can have little impact unless xenophobia, nativism and fake news are also challenged through honest storytelling. So since 2017, Katy has focused on developing her profile as a journalist and documentary-maker.
Katy’s work on immigration — from H4 visas to refugee resettlement to the history of passports
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has appeared in outlets including The Guardian and The Washington Post. She also presents and produces documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, on subjects ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the journeys of African migrants traveling through Costa Rica.
In 2018, Katy developed American Journey, a multimedia account of a cross-country road trip from San Francisco to New York, in which she traced a small part of the United States’ complex immigration history.
Katy currently lives in San Francisco with her very English husband and two American-born sons, one more 21st century immigrant who’s now proud to call California home.
